How One Entrepreneur Built a New Healthcare Payment Rail That Saves Employers 50-90%

Jake Fackrell watched his company’s health insurance premiums climb 30 percent every year. Despite running a successful data company with 60 employees, he found himself trapped in a system that forced him to offer high-deductible plans that provided little real value to his team.

Rather than accept the status quo, Fackrell applied his expertise in data aggregation to build something entirely new. The result is Savvos Health, a platform that replaces the broken claims processing system with direct cash payments, and it landed at number 220 on the Inc. 5000 list.

In this episode of The Go-to-Market Podcast, Jake Fackrell shares the playbook for eliminating administrative waste, aligning incentives across stakeholders, and creating a healthcare benefit that actually works for everyone.

A System Built on Complexity

The traditional healthcare payment system fails because no one knows what anything costs until months after the service is rendered.

“You go in and you have a surgery or even a doctor’s visit and you hand over an ID card, and that starts this process of claims adjudication and claims processing. And you don’t know as a consumer what that’s gonna end up costing you.”

This opacity creates a $500 billion annual industry called Revenue Cycle Management. Providers spend enormous resources simply trying to collect payment from insurance companies. Meanwhile, over 500,000 families declare bankruptcy each year due to healthcare costs.

For employers, the situation is equally frustrating. Fackrell experienced this firsthand: “Every year I was having these renewal meetings with my broker and we were always, the premiums were always going up by 20, 30 percent.”

Pay Providers Directly at the Time of Service

Instead of adding features to a broken process, Fackrell built a new payment rail from scratch. The core innovation is simple: negotiate direct cash payments with providers at the time of service.

“What if you could just pay the provider at the time of the procedure so they don’t have to try to collect their money? There’s no collections. There’s no revenue cycle management.”

When providers know they will receive guaranteed payment immediately, they offer substantial discounts.

“They say, well, if you’ll pay us at the time of the procedure, we’ll roll out the red carpet for you. We’ll give you 50, 60, 70, sometimes 80 or 90 percent off of their contracted rates.”

The platform functions as a pre-care communication hub where all stakeholders align before any procedure takes place. Fackrell describes it as “kind of like Slack for healthcare before the surgery.”

Three Wins for Three Stakeholders

1. For Employers: Lower Costs and Better Benefits

The business case is compelling. Employers see premiums decrease while offering dramatically better benefits. One company that recently switched to Savvos had been providing employees with $9,000 deductibles. Now they offer zero out-of-pocket costs.

“Their premiums are coming down as the employer, the self-funded employer group, and they’re able to offer their employees a much, much better benefit than what they’re previously used to.”

2. For Employees: Zero Financial Anxiety

The patient experience transforms completely. No surprise bills. No balance invoices. No months of uncertainty.

“They walk outta that doctor’s office or that surgery. They never have to worry about making a payment because it’s all done through the platform. They don’t have to worry about balance bills, EOBs, or invoices, none of that’s coming in.”

3. For Providers: Guaranteed Payment

Providers receive 100 percent of the agreed-upon price, on time, without chasing payment through complex billing cycles. This frees them to focus on patient care rather than administrative battles.

Key Takeaways for Business Leaders

Question the assumptions. Fackrell observed competitors adding “bells and whistles on an outdated, crazy existing process that didn’t work.” Instead of optimizing a broken system, he replaced it entirely.

Align incentives across all parties. The traditional system creates adversarial relationships between patients, providers, and payers. The new model ensures everyone wins: employers save money, employees get better benefits, and providers receive guaranteed payment.

Eliminate unnecessary complexity. The $500 billion Revenue Cycle Management industry exists only to navigate complexity the system itself created. Removing that complexity unlocks value for everyone.

Apply expertise from other domains. Fackrell’s background in data aggregation taught him to find signals in noise and question existing processes. That same approach transformed his understanding of healthcare payments.

Final Thoughts

Jake Fackrell’s story demonstrates that the most powerful innovation is often not a new technology but a new way of thinking. For business leaders facing their own operational challenges, this episode offers a clear lesson: sometimes the most effective solution is not to optimize a broken process but to replace it entirely.

Listen to the full episode to hear how Fackrell built Savvos Health, the role of AI in accelerating data processing, and his approach to staying at the top of his game while building a company designed to cure healthcare.